FALLING SKIES Scoop: Noah Wyle Talks the Uneasy Alliance with the New Aliens the Volm

There is a popular saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This classic strategy is implemented with some misgivings as a new alien race arrives on Earth insisting that they may be able to help the 2nd Mass and the other human survivors in defeating the Espheni occupying the planet. In a recent press conference call, star Noah Wyle provided insight into Tom Mason’s difficult decision to align with the Volm and the repercussions throughout the 3rd season of FALLING SKIES.

Why do you think Tom is so easily accepting of the new alien race?NOAH: Well, Tom’s not a stupid man, and I know that he’s got the same questions and misgivings that everybody else does. But there’s a couple of things that he has great confidence about. The first is that on a gut level, he just sort of trusts this character of Cochise (Doug Jones), the lead alien. There’s something about him and the rapport that they’ve developed over the last seven months that despite all signs of trepidation, he inherently trusts him. Second, and really more compelling argument, is that it’s working and you can’t really argue with results. These guys show up. They have a technology that’s far superior to anything that we have. And through this alliance, our group has not only been able to defend its borders but expand them. And for the first time since the invasion begins we’re winning, and it’s pretty heavy stuff. So I think he has to project a sense of confidence and sort of a game-face to everybody so that they don’t panic. But let’s say behind closed doors, he’s got the same fears that they potentially could be throwing off the yoke of one master for another, and that it’s something to keep your eye on.

What are you most proud of about this new season?NOAH: I’m happy to say that it’s an interesting thing. I’ve never experienced a show that got better, and better, and better. I’ve been on a couple that started off great and dipped, but this one I think for some reason the first year we didn’t know quite what we wanted to do. We had a really good idea and implementing it we just sort of took a scatter-gun approach, and that was a really good learning experience for us. We learned what worked well and what didn’t work well. Second season, I think we really built on that knowledge and momentum and delivered a pretty solid season and came out the other side realizing, “Okay, now that we’ve introduced these characters, and now that we’ve established this world, now we’re going to have some fun. Now we can start talking about the bigger themes that we thought this show would be about and we can really start to peel away the layers of these characters and get to what’s underneath.” And as hard as it was to shoot this season, and it was the toughest one yet, I’m really gratified at the outcome.

Could you talk about Tom’s relationship with Anne (Moon Bloodgood) this season? How does having the baby on the way unite Anne and Tom and how does that also affect Tom’s relationship with his other children on the show?NOAH: Well, this was a tricky one to negotiate this year because Moon Bloodgood showed up pretty pregnant in real life, which meant that we only had her for a couple of episodes before she had to fly back to California and have her baby. So that meant we had to shoot a lot of scenes out of context with her for future episodes that hadn’t really been written yet so we could pepper her into the season. It also meant that she wasn’t going to be able to be an action hero the way that we had sort of hoped to develop her character at the end of last season when she was running around with a blow-torch frying Crawlies and looking very much a bad-ass. So, creatively, we had to make some adjustments. But I think it worked out very well because the notion of bringing a child into the world, while it seems inherently cruel, is a biological necessity if these people are going to continue. And it seemed appropriate that these two characters had finally put to bed their grief of the lives that they’d loss and the spouses that they’d lost, and through this baby, really forged a commitment to each other. I think the other kids to a certain extent aren’t as clingy to their father as they used to be. They’ve been sort of chomping at the bit to exercise some autonomy and some independence away from him, and this is the season they finally get it for better or worse. And there’s enough of an age disparity that there doesn’t feel like there’s any real sibling rivalry. The baby is pretty much embraced by everybody — until the baby starts to exhibit very odd behavior.

You mentioned that this has been the toughest season to shoot. What made it so challenging?NOAH: Well, there were a lot of variables. It was a particularly wet winter up there and we had a lot of practical location shoots. We integrated horses into the plotline. We had a lot of disparate storylines going all at once. We came back with huge gamble creatively in initiating three or four gigantic storylines, all of which had an element of science fiction to them. And, in a lot of ways, I felt that we were maybe taking too big of a risk, so it required a lot of diligence and attention to detail to make sure that we were playing these things out and that they were going to pop at the right times during the course of the season. So it just was a lot more work for all of us. You put in your 12 to 13 hours on the set, then you’d come home and you’d look at the next day’s work, and then I’d be on the phone with the writers in L.A. talking about other things, since I wear a producer hat on this as well. I was more exhausted at the end of this season than I had been. But in a weird way, I’m told there’s an analogy to childbirth to be made where this kind of nice amnesia settles in after the pain and what you have to show for it makes it all seem worth. You kind of forget about how miserable it was until you try it again.

With all the things that’s going on with Hal (Drew Roy) and the eye worm, and the fact that Tom had one at the beginning of Season 2, a lot of fans are wondering are there going to be consequences not just beyond what’s going on with Hal, but for Tom’s character. Is there still that’s going to be going on from Tom having had the eye worm?NOAH: No. There is something up with Tom, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the eye worm, and we don’t really know what that is. Yes, the eye worm manifests itself differently in Hal than it did in Tom. With Tom, it was more of a tracking device to keep the alien Red Eye and the rebel faction of the Skidders in close proximity to the 2nd Mass. This eye worm is serving a totally different purpose, and basically creating a schizophrenic personality within Hal where he’s no longer conscious of his actions at various intervals. And that’s a really sort of terrifying prospect to have in essence a mole within our ranks. That’s a huge part of the season.

This season we’re introduced to the new character of Marina (Gloria Ruben), and we see that once Tom leaves, she’s not exactly doing what he would want. What can you say about that new dynamic?NOAH: Well, a couple of things. First of all, it was really gratifying to work with Gloria Ruben again. She and I played doctors on ER together for many years and I think the world of her. She’s an interesting character because at first blush she just sort of seemed like Tom’s “Gal Friday” who’s going to assist him in his learning curve in accepting the responsibilities of President. But then we come to realize that she’s fairly ambitious in her own right and she’s got an agenda of her own and doesn’t necessarily always agree with Tom’s decision making. So it’s just a way of creating conflict within Tom’s learning curve of power and helping plot that out. It’s a significant part of the season. It’s not the dominant aspect of the story telling, but she has a great character, as does bringing on Robert Sean Leonard. It’s sort of an attempt — even though we’re floating a lot of the characters right now, to bring in new people who are actors of a very high caliber. And through their characters, help reveal to a larger degree who the people that are already in place are and to peel back the layers of their character’s onion, so to speak.

Could you talk a little bit about the adjustment that Tom has to make to be an elected leader with authority rather than just a smart guy that helps lead the resistance?NOAH: That was a big leap. I mean, we left the character last year saying, “What? I don’t want the responsibility. I want to keep my family and the 2nd Mass alive. In fact, I don’t really think there’s anything for us in Charleston anymore. I think we should leave.” And he and Weaver were on the way out the door when those pods with the new aliens show up. Then the next time we see him, he’s the President of the United States. So what happened in that seven-month interval? We sort of had to fill in the blanks. And the way that I justified the change of heart was through this alliance. This alliance is a game-changer potentially. They bring in this technology that could actually be really effective in fighting the other bad aliens. He doesn’t really feel that he’s the President of the United States so much as just like the Mayor of a very small town, so his self-deprecating humor about his position in his sort of internal misgivings about accepting it keep him and to help plot out the course of his leadership arc. It’s like wearing a suit that doesn’t fit very well in the beginning. Then gradually as the season unfolds, it fits him better, and better, and better. But, right now, he’s sort of playing at being the President as opposed to feeling or being President.

How do you feel that this season really compares to the other seasons in terms of the scare factor?NOAH: Scare factor. I think it ranks pretty high. I think there’s some moments in the pilot that were great. I think Tom had a couple of moments in the first season that were fairly terrifying. I think Season 2 was a lot better season comprehensively than Season 1. And I don’t know if it was appreciably scarier, but the storytelling is smarter and the reveals are better, and it’s more satisfying viewing. But there’s a couple episodes coming up latter half of the season that should be pretty terrifying.

Can talk about your scenes with Colin Cunningham?NOAH: The characters of Pope and Tom just don’t like each other, and with good reason. They’re very different men. And what Colin and I have tried to do is to really have that tension sort of simmer, and then come to a slow boil, and then boil, and then pop. And each time it pops, whether it was the third episode of Season 2 or the 5th episode of Season 3, these guys just go at it and there’s always somebody that interrupts it from coming to its final conclusion, which is one of them killing the other one. It’s just great storytelling and really fun to play. To have a character that you keep around out of basic necessity but that you really have no affinity for. And Colin’s a very smart actor. He’s a very clever actor, and when you work with him, he keeps you on your toes and makes you a good tennis player. We work very differently as actors, which also sort of helps that tension, because neither one of us is really aware of what the other one’s going to do, and it just tends to pop on camera as a result.

How much is Robert Sean Leonard going to be in Season 3?NOAH: Quite a bit. I think we got Bob for six out of ten episodes. I’m trying to get him hired on as a regular. if at all possible. I think he’s terrific. We go back a long ways, Bob and I do. We played together in a movie called “Swing Kids” back in the early ‘90s. And even though we never really kept in touch, I’ve always had a great deal of respect for him as an actor. We had an absolute ball working together. Initially, we wanted a character that was sort of a subterranean dweller, somebody who was incredibly smart. Well actually, the whole genesis of the idea came from at the beginning of Season 2 there was a character that was written for sort of an East Indian engineer that was going to be a potential love interest for the character of Lourdes. And then, we ended up casting this really, really handsome African-American actor and changed the character to Jamil [Brandon Jay McLaren]and he went from being an engineer to sort of an auto mechanic. It worked great and there were some really compelling story lines, especially his death. But we never quite filled the bill of what we were looking for, which was to have somebody with a lot of technical expertise who could be a bit of a MacGyver in a crisis. So that was where the idea for this new character came from. And rather than make him a fully functioning human being, we wanted him to be almost like a savant or somebody who was wounded to the extent that they were completely anti-social so that they had their own internal obstacle to get past in order to contribute to the group. So the character’s backstory is he’s lost his family, and as a result lives in the catacombs underneath the City of Charleston and is responsible for maintaining the generator system that gives us power. But we need him to do more than that, and so that’s the conflict there. I’ve got to say Bob’s one of the funniest guys I’ve ever worked with, and we have a really hard time not breaking each other up on camera.

Do you have a favorite storyline or a scene from this season that you can tell us anything about?NOAH: Yes. There’s an episode that’s coming up the latter half of the season, latter third part of the season. I’m not sure which number it’s going to air in because we shot it out of sequence. We shot it as the last episode of the season, but it won’t air as the last episode. Written by a guy named John Worth called “Strange Brew” that I think is the best we’ve done yet. It’s the first time that we really play with the concept of time within the body of an episode, and it’s just a very clever show. It’s a break with the traditional narrative form for us and it worked really, really well. I don’t know that it will go this particular well very often, but for one episode this season, it’s terrific.

To if Tom’s faith in the Volm is rewarded, be sure tune in for the 2-hour third season premiere of FALLING SKIES on Sunday, June 9th at 9:00 p.m. on TNT.

Tiffany Vogt is the Senior West Coast Editor, contributing as a columnist and entertainment reporter to TheTVaddict.com. She has a great love for television and firmly believes that entertainment is a world of wondrous adventures that deserves to be shared and explored – she invites you to join her. Please feel free to contact Tiffany at Tiffany_Vogt_2000@yahoo.com or follow her at on Twitter (@TVWatchtower).